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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on May 19th, 2008 Achim Steiner, Executive Director of UNEP, invites you to participate in the following side-event:
Background: Agenda: This side event will provide an introduction to the UNEP Programme in the Congo, including the following: UNEP will report on our programme to assist the Congolese govt, including the post-conflict assessment, assistance with the environmental framework law, and facilitation of a stakeholder dialogue in the Virungas region. For further details, contact: melanie.virtue at unep.org ————————- Permalink | ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on April 21st, 2008 Please see attached the results from meeting of organizations of Indigenous Peoples and Traditional Communities from Latin America, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Papua, Indonesia, in the city of Manaus, Brazil for the Latin American Workshop, “Climate Change and Forest Peoples: Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) and the Rights of Indigenous and Traditional Peoples”, 1-4th of April, 2008. Please forward to who ever you may think is interested, in particular indigenous and traditional population organizations. Please note that the Manaus Declaration and the Synthesis of the working groups are attached in all workshop languages: Spanish, French, Bahasa, English and Portuguese. Other info: Link to workshop other documents http://partnerpage.google.com/amazonfore… Link workshop’s photos: http://amazonforestpeople.multiply.com/ Press news below English (NYT and Mongabay) and Spanish (El Publico) Sorry for sending so many documents, but it is really important for the REDD Southern Outreach. Best regards, Paula Moreira El Publico, Spain: ChequeIndígena (attached) Mongabay: http://news.mongabay.com/2008/0407-manau… Rainforest peoples form alliance to demand representation at climate talks Rainforest peoples from 11 nations have formed a coalition to demand a greater say in future climate negotiations. Meeting in Manaus, Brazil, in the heart of the Amazon rainforest, representatives of forest communities from Brazil, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ecuador, French Guyana, Guyana, Indonesia, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Suriname and Venezuela signed an agreement that calls on governments to respect forest dwellers’ rights to their land, natural resources and traditional livelihoods. The coalition hopes to gain access to ecosystem services payments like the proposed REDD (”reduction of emissions from deforestation and forest degradation”) mechanism that won preliminary approval at last year’s U.N. climate talks in Bali, Indonesia. Proponents of the initiative say that REDD could deliver billions of dollars to rural communities while protecting forests and fighting climate change. Some indigenous groups have been supportive of REDD, but others fear that the mechanism could worsen conflicts over land. The new alliance hopes that it can allay these concerns by ensuring that native peoples are represented in climate discussions. The scenario provided by the REDD mechanisms brings together the interests of forest communities and the interests of scientists, environmentalists and members of social movements throughout the world, said Paulo Moutinho, from the Institute for Environmental Research of the Amazon (IPAM). The indigenous people need to understand exactly what is happening to their forests. They have always been forgotten when it is time for decision-making and time has come for them to be taken into account because their ancestral knowledge on nature enables them to provide important inputs for the climate debate, added Yolanda Hernández, the indigenous representative of the Maya Kakchiquel people, of Guatemala. Adilson Vieira, the Secretary General of the Amazon Work Group, said Brazil was an appropriate choice for the conference given the long battle by its native peoples to gain rights to the vast Amazon rainforest. The experience of the people of the Brazilian forests in their struggle for the establishment of indigenous lands and extractive and sustainable development reserves is an experience that can be used by the other countries in the alliance as an inspiration on their path towards conquering their own rights, Vieira said. The Manaus declaration was unanimously approved this Friday, April 4th, 2008 by 13 countries. UN observers and non-governmental organizations from Brazil, England and the United States attended the signing. PRESS RELEASE: International Alliance will unite the forest peoples (The objective is to influence the UN debate on climate change) Manaus, Brazil (4.4.08) – The forest peoples of the world are joining forces in in order to have access to resources deriving from the thriving green market, based on future mechanisms for the reduction of emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD), to be created through the UN Climate Convention. They want to use this opportunity so that their fundamental rights may be fulfilled: the right to land and to natural resources and respect to their traditional livelihoods. Gathered in Manaus, in the heart of the Brazilian Amazon, the participants of the Peoples of the Forest and Climate Change workshop have just set the basis for an international alliance, based on a Brazilian model with a 20-year long history that brings together indigenous people, extractive producers and riverine populations, inspired in the efforts of Chico Mendes. The new alliance to be established will function as a network and transnational forum for the exchange of experiences between forest populations and mostly for influencing international discussions on climate, deforestation and mechanisms for the reduction of greenhouse emissions. “When one single country manifests itself and claims its rights at the international level, it is a drop of water in the ocean”, compares Manoel da Cunha, the president of the National Rubber Tappers Council (CNS). According to Cunha, the initiative of establishing a transnational alliance brings greater density to the claims of the forest people and increases the chances from them to be answered. “The indigenous people need to understand exactly what is happening to their forests. They have always been forgotten when it is time for decision-making and time has come for them to be taken into account because their ancestral knowledge on nature enables them to provide important inputs for the climate debate”, said Yolanda Hernández, the indigenous representative of the Maya Kakchiquel people, of Guatemala. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. More information available at www.amazonforestpeople.com Photos at http://amazonforestpeople.multiply.com/ For interviews, please contact Jaime Gesisky – (55) ** 61 81226042 – jaimegesisky at gmail.com ; Milena del Rio do Valle (55)** 91 8121 6940 – mdrvalle at gmail.com Permalink | ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on March 21st, 2008 Modern Purim thoughts include the UN. Purim is the day when Jews remember the plans made by Haman to eradicate all the Jews of the old Persian empire. He did not succeed and paid with his life - as we say - the rest is history. Jews were ordered to remember what happened then - so they read that story - the Megillah (the parchment of Esther) - year after year - on the evening before Purim. This year it happened on Thursday, March, 20th - so last night we participated at the “Megillah Madness” - at The New York Synagogue in Manhattan - led by Rabbi Marc Schneier. On Purim, the Jewish Jockers are used to run a competition for the coveted “Haman of the Year Award” and this year’s two top candidates were two heads of UN Member States who appear daily on the UN menu: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran and President Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir of the Sudan. The former attacks Jews verbally every day, and has also sponsored militants that fight Jews and Israel daily, while the latter was reportedly actually engaged in genocide against less Arabized Africans of Darfur. www.SustainabiliTank.info has posted many times articles on above deeds. We even tried to understand the background of the genocide in Darfur by considering climate change aspects as an influence on what started the warfare. But whatever the reasons, it is the government of Khartoom that backed its favorites. We see here fights between intruding, more Arabized, pastoralists against lesser Arabized, and blacker, agriculturalists. Our claim was that this is genocide that was started by increased desertification in the region. The UN as an institution did not want to hear such arguments, and eventually it took Sir Nicholas Stern, and the intervention of the UK government at the UN Security Council, to vindicate last year what we were saying three years ago. Whatever the issue, it was al-Bashir’s responsibility “TO PROTECT” his citizens. Instead he puts hurdles before those from the outside that came to help. Happy Purim - and I would like to note further that this year Purim falls on the same day as Good Friday - or Easter Friday. This has happened only the second time since 1910. Easter occurs on the Sunday after the first full moon following the vernal equinox, and that full moon usually coincides with the first day of Passover. That is how both religions - Judaism and Christianity have the renewal holidays aligned. This year this is not the case, and the reason is that it is leap year in the Jewish calendar, and an added month (a 13-th month) has been introduced. That brings instead the strange alignment between Easter and Purim. We would like to see in this an opportunity for healing - in the sense that we could say changes could be introduced so that Haman-type of hatred is removed from our lives - our society gets renewed like at Passover time, though this is Purim time. Would it be so terrible to ask the UN to consider this proposition of making sure that evil is remembered and actually acted against? Permalink | ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on February 21st, 2008 Forest Day: Shaping the Debate on Forests and Climate Change in Central Africa. ‘Forests are a key issue for climate change discussions’, said Yvo de Boer, the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Conference on Climate Change (UNFCCC), during last December’s international climate meeting in Bali. The conference delegates also expressed an urgent need for ‘meaningful action to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation’ (REDD). The Central African Congo Basin, the second largest forest area in the world, will play a crucial role in the success of any climate change policy. Proposed new climate initiatives raise questions about the impact and role of these initiatives in the region. That is why CIFOR is organizing Forest Day – to help shape the debate on forests and climate change in Central Africa. Forest Day will be held on 24 April 2008. Speakers representing a broad range of forest stakeholders will present and discuss prominent forest issues central to the climate change debate. There will be scientists, local and international NGOs, university lecturers, policymakers, communities, experts and others interested in the subject. Forest Day aims to provide a regional perspective on the discussions surrounding forests and climate change. By debating and analyzing the social, economic, scientific, technological and political issues, Forest Day will provide stepping stones for informed climate policies in the region. Presentations, discussions and debates will focus on: - Forest’s role in climate change mitigation Contact Information: Janneke Romijn Permalink | ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on January 3rd, 2008 Africa - Rich nations attacked for failing Congo. The head of the United Nations refugee agency has accused the rich world of failing to respond adequately to the humanitarian crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo, even as its multinationals “systematically loot” the country of its resources. In an interview with the FT shortly after his return from the DRC, António Guterres, UN high commissioner for refugees, said western assistance came nowhere near meeting people’s needs in a vast country where continuing instability and widespread poverty had created one of the worst humanitarian situations in the world. Mr Guterres, a former Portuguese prime minister, attributed this neglect in part to the fact that, unlike Iraq, Afghanistan or even Somalia, misery in the DRC involved no perceived threat to western governments.
Aid groups say 3m-4m people in the DRC, a country with a population of about 60m, have died in recent years as a result of conflict, poverty and disease. While most of the country is now stable – the civil war ended in 2003 and UN-supervised elections were held in 2006 – 400,000 people have been uprooted in the past 12 months by a resurgence of violence in the eastern province of North Kivu. The UN estimates that 800,000 people have been displaced in North Kivu, which has also seen violence against women, including rape and mutilation, reach terrifying proportions. Although international agencies and donor governments are providing some assistance, and the UN has mounted its biggest-ever force of some 16,500 peacekeepers, this is small in comparison with needs, Mr Guterres says. He points to the sheer size of the DRC – about four times that of France – and the high cost of operating there, given a lack of infrastructure that requires everything to be transported by aircraft. “One of the most frustrating things is to see a country in which you had [successful] elections but then you have to say to people: nothing can be improved in the next few months, even in the next few years, in infrastructure, in water, in sanitation, in health, in education, in jobs. And so the population starts to ask itself whether democracy has any value. “Think about the amount of resources that have been taken out of this country. Lots of companies operate in DRC, taking out its resources, in many circumstances, without a minimum respect for any rules. The international community has systematically looted DRC and we should not forget that.” Permalink | ### |
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on December 31st, 2007 The following is something that is an eye opener unless, like we at www.SustainabiliTank.info, you understood a long time ago that Washington has picked with eyes closed Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Pakistan as friends. All those three States are run by rotten rulers, and because of the US backing of those rulers the situation is evolving so that if they are removed now the situation changes to total chaos. This is the Heisenberg principle of foreign policy. If you back the wrong dictator for your own reasons - unrelated to the internal wishes of the people living in that country, you change the situation so that you cannot undo it by trying to stop your involvement. In effect - you move the country predictably to the direction from which you tried at first to distance it. —————— Bush has been chasing the wrong nukes, by Johann Hari, The Independent. Published: 31 December 2007. Punctuating 2007 there has been a string of nuclear break-ins, accidents and screw-ups that should have us sweating. How many people know that Congo’s main nuclear scientist was arrested in March for flogging off enriched uranium to anyone who wanted it, in a kind of radioactive eBay? Or that this summer six bombs with more explosive power than Hiroshima were accidentally flown across the continental United States, and left unguarded on a landing strip in Louisiana for ten hours before anyone in the Air Force wondered where they’d gone? Or that this November, four unknown men managed to shoot their way into South Africa’s main nuclear facility, which has material enough for 25 nuclear bombs – and could rummage through the enriched uranium storage vault for 45 minutes before they escaped? Nothing else about this picture is reassuring. Professor Shaun Gregory of the Pakistan Security Research Unit has discovered that almost the entire nuclear arsenal is kept in the most fundamentalist part of Pakistan – the west. This is one of the main jihadi gathering-places, where the 7/7 bombers trained and Osama Bin Laden is almost certainly hiding out. They are stored there because it is the furthest possible point from Pakistan’s nuclear rival, India, giving the country maximum warning time in a nuclear war or hypothetical invasion. The big danger is that this part of the Pakistani state shatters into competing fragments, and control of the nukes becomes contested. Already, today, Musharraf finds it impossible to control great swathes of the country’s territory. It’s not hard to see this loosening yet further. Pakistan is a cobbling together of conflicting linguistic and tribal groups, many of whom want to go it alone. If the military begins to fracture, the experts fear three potential scenarios – none of them probable, but all of them possible. Nightmare One: a jihadi group manages to seize a nuclear weapon outright, by force, from the vacuum. Osama Bin Laden has, after all, told his fanatical followers it is an “Islamic duty” to acquire a “Muslim bomb” (presumably followed by Islamic radiation sickness and Islamic cancer). This scenario is highly unlikely. If the army breaks up, it will be a major prestige-prize to keep control of the weapons, establishing that you are the Top Dogs. They will not relinquish them without a hard fight, or lots of cash. Nightmare Two: One of the broken shards of the Pakistani army that manages to hold onto some of the nukes turns out to be sympathetic to al-Qa’ida. This is more likely, because parts of the Pakistani army have already helped al-Qa’ida, repeatedly and enthusiastically. For example, 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was about to be seized in Karachi a year after the attacks – until he was tipped off by friends within the Pakistani military establishment. He was passed from serving military officer to serving military officer, until he was captured in a military safe-house in Rawalpindi. The senior Pakistani nuclear scientist, Pervez Hoodbhoy, estimates today that 10 per cent of his colleagues are Talibanists, noting, “There is potential for dark things to happen.” Nightmare Three: As Pakistan falls apart, the soldiers at the nuclear sites start to sell off the nukes to whoever will pay for them. Again, this is more likely – because it has already happened. A Q Khan, the father of the country’s nuclear bomb, effectively opened an international branch of Tesco for nuclear weapons. He merrily sold to North Korea, Libya and others. The former UN weapons inspector David Albright says: “As loyalties break down … you may not be able to get a whole weapon, but you might get the core.”
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Posted on Sustainabilitank.info on December 11th, 2007 The Commission on Sustainable Development Is It A Moribund UN Body Or Will It Be Revived Because It Is Needed After The Re-Engagement Hoopla That Happens Now At Bali? We had experience starting from before the Brundtland Commission of 1987, we were engaged at the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro, and we wrote the “Promptbook on Sustainable Development for The World Summit on Sustainable Development, Johannesburg 2002. In short we are strong believers that if the UN CSD were not created in 1994, we would have had to create it now. Why that? Simply, because as it is crystal clear now that the development of tomorrow cannot go on by rules of the development of yesterday - and this was given, right today, full global recognition in Oslo, when the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the scientists of the IPCC, and to Al Gore - whatever will come out from the Bali-Poznan-Copenhagen process will be clearly a final global landing on the runway that was built in Rio for Agenda 21. And as we keep saying - this will be a joint Sustainable Development for North and South, East and West. It will be a world were those that have the needed technologies will share them with those that are only trying out for their own National development. This will not be done because of altruism - it will be rather because of self interest that comes from the simple fact that we are all residents of planet earth, and we understand that we have caused the planet to be on a path of destruction that harms the continuation of life as nature or god created. After UNCED, The UN created a Department for Policy Coordination and Sustainable Development and Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Gali appointed Mr. Nitin Desai, at the Under-Secretary-General level to head the Department. 1994-1998 Joke Waller-Hunter from the Netherlands was the first Director of the Division for Sustainable Development and the head of the Commission on Sustainable Development - so the Commission itself dates back, for all practical purpose, to 1994 - even though it officially was started in 1992. In May 2007 we witnessed the CSD 15 (that is counting back to 1992!). In 1997, Secretary-General Kofi, in an effort to reduce the number of UN Under-Secretary-Generals, consolidated three economic and social departments and created UN DESA (UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs) and eventually put Mr. Desai as head of DESA where he was until he was replaced in 2003 with Mr. Jose Antonio Ocampo, the former Finance Minister of Colombia; the new Secretary-General Mr. Ban Ki-moon, brought in, July 2007, Mr. Sha Zukang, the previous China Ambassador in Geneva. In 1998 Ms. JoAnne DiSano, with a background of having worked for the Canadian Government, and then for 11 years with the Australian Government, became the Director of the new Division of Sustainable Development within DESA. She held this position until September of 2007 and since then the position is VACANT, and it looks as if the UN does not care. Ms. Joke Waller-Hunter, left her position with the CSD in 1998 in order to become the Executive Secretary of the of Bonn based UN Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) where she remained untill her death in 2006. She was replaced there in 2007, by Mr. Yvo de Boer, appointed by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Mr. Yvo de Boer is also from the Netherlands, where he was Director for International Affairs of the Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning and Environment. He was in the Past Vice-Chair of the Commision on SD and Vice-Chair of the COP of the UNFCCC. Both, the CSD and the UNFCCC are outcomes of the 1992 UNCED. Ms. Joke Waller-Hunter’s departure from New York may have had something to do with the 1997 UN reorganization that replaced the Department of SD with a Division of SD within DESA. She may have sensed that her presence at UNFCCC will further SD goals easier then at the new Division of SD - that its creation caused in effect a demotion in her position. The present vacancy at the nerve-center of the CSD, at a time the CSD is needed indeed, following the latest push at the UNFCCC, on matters of climate change, that causes our renewed interest in the UN CSD and in the UN Division that was established specifically in order to run the CSD. We are afraid that it will be difficult to see progress on the UN level, in matters of climate change, without a functioning office that deals with sustainable development. Now to be honest, our interest is not just because of curiosity - but rather because of the worry that we understand very well the reasons for the slow demise of the CSD - the factors that got it to start on what may be a path to extinction. At CSD 9 it was decided that the CSD will discuss specific topics in cycles of two years. So the first cycle was Water for CSD11-CSD12, the second cycle Energy for CSD14-CSD15, the third cycle Land Use for CSD16-CSD17. So 2006-2007 was the Energy cycle, and as in UN fashion it was supposed to be the turn to have a chair from Asia, it was the Asians that suggested Qatar to chair the energy subject. Now Qatar is a producer of gas rather then oil. Above was nothing yet when compared with what happened in the last day of CSD 15. As always, there are elections for the next CSD membership - the membership is held at 53 countries elected according to a regional key - and then there is the election of the “bureau” and the new chair. The turn according to UN habit was that next chair will be from Africa, and as said, the topic for CSD16 in 2008, and for CSD17 in 2009, will be Land Use. The Africans decided to put forward Zimbabwe as their choice and campaigned with the G77 that this is their wish. The UK did not want any part of this, and specially since the land policies of the Mugabe Government have run Zimbabwe agriculture from being a large agricultural exporter to becoming a starving nation, with an economy that was totally destroyed, a monetary situation that shows astronomic inflation rate, and human rights problems that clearly make it ineligible for a UN leadership position, it is this obstinacy that reduced the CSD to plain irrelevancy. We were there that night of Friday May 11, 2007, in room 4 in the UN basement, and watched in disbelief how the distinguished, low-key German Ambassador, head in New York of the EU presidency, with the German Minister of the Environment next to him, simply told the CSD Chair from Qatar that the EU cannot work with this sort of CSD. If by any way I exaggerate now, 7 months later, please forgive my memory, but see what I, Pincas Jawetz, Inner City Press journalist Matthew Rusell Lee, and the EUobserver from Brussels, wrote about this - the references on the www.SustainabiliTank.info web are: - EUobserver on the 5/11 Crash of CSD15 (May 14th, 2007) - A First Analysis: From The Ashes of the CSD, Will We See A Rising Phoenix? A Brundtland II, To be Called - “OUR COMMON GROUND” ? (May 13th, 2007) - The UN General Assembly Resolution of September 30, 1974 against South Africa was not Premised On Apartheid’s Threat To Security, But On Its Serious Violation Of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. WHY DOES - 9/11 and 3/11 Have Become Symbols of what Oil Money Can Cause To Those Who Insist On Buying The Oil, Will 5/11 Become The Symbol of Awakening at the UN? This Because Of May 11, 2007 Late Evening Happenings At - At the UN, Zimbabwe Elected 26-21 to Sustainable Development Chair for CSD16, As EU and Others Reject Final Text of The Chairman from Qatar of CSD15. (May 12th, 2007) I took then the 5/11 date and in ways of exaggeration tried to compare this with 9/11 in New York and 3/11 in Madrid. Was it really an exaggeration? Could we say that the backing Zimbabwe got from States with unresolved problems from colonial days, and oil states that think, completely wrong, that they have anything to gain from derailing the concept of sustainable development, sustainable energy, global warming, climate change…, from efforts to improve the life of billions of people? Further, the UN recognizes three groups of States with greater needs - these are the Least Developed States (LDCs), the Small Island Independent States (SIDS), and the Landlocked States. These are the States within the UN system that are most in need of help via sustainable development. Why did the UN take them out from being under the Under-Secretary-General who heads DESA, and put them under a separate Under-Secretary-General? Does this not cause waste and decreased efficiency? Would they not be served better within a well functioning unified economic organization that takes, for instance, in account the interests of Island States when it comes to the subject of the effects of global warming/climate change? Now, I was not going to allow myself to lose my hope for a functioning CSD. The articles I refer to above are actually articles of hope - that is I hope that from the ashes the CSD will rise, as a Phoenix, under the leadership of Brundtland II. The CSD expects Germany to fund the bringing to New York of youth representatives from the developing countries. A main topic will be “Drought and Desertification and Africa” - this means effects of climate change that helped cause warfare in Africa. Will the world allow Africa to commit suicide through obstinacy, or is the world obliged to look into the mirror and say we cannot continue on this path? Mr. Baroso bit his lip and made an effort. We assume the EU will continue to try to find a way to keep the Commission in business, if at least the UN Secretariat helps reestablish a CSD Secretariat - and at the minimum there must be a functioning Director of the CSD Secretariat. That is the closing of the three month old vacancy that was created with the departure of Ms. JoAnne DiSano. African States: 12 besides Zimbabwe. They are - Cameroon, Cape Verde, Congo/Kinshasa, Djibouti, Gambia, Guinea, Senegal, South Africa, Sudan, Tunisia, Tanzania, Zambia. Asian States: 11 - Bahrain, China, North Korea, India, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Kuwait, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Thailand. Eastern Europe: 6 - Belarus, Croatia, Czech Rep., Poland, Russia, Serbia. Latin America and Caribbean: 10 - Antigua and Barbuda (the incoming head of G-77), Belize, Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, Haiti, Peru. Western European and Others: 13 - Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Monaco, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, UK, US. |